Everyone Else

I can only read this title as ironic, because “everyone else” is exactly what this intimate erotic duet excludes.  Two thirtyish German professionals are vacationing together in Sardinia and testing the limits of their new relationship.   Lars Eidinger is a supposedly brilliant young architect waiting for his first prize or commission, big blond and bland, with a passive-aggressive streak.  Birgit Minichmayr is a brash little music publicist, who is always putting herself out there, sexually and emotionally.  The director Maren Ade is a young woman who comes across as a harsher Eric Rohmer, picking apart the strands of mutual self-delusion, through conversation and sidelong glances.  She throws you into close quarters with this couple, without introduction, and lets you figure out just what’s going on between them, as they bounce off each other and a limited number of others.  This is romantic comedy that digs deep enough beneath the skin to hurt, and maintains a healthy respect for the mysteries of human motivation.  It doesn’t assume or assert too much, but just lets us observe and understand, only up to a point, but certainly more than the characters understand themselves.  (2010, MC-71)